The "hidden hunger"

It is a major factor in infant mortality, illness, and disability among children. It not only sharply reduces a child’s chances of survival, but also affects the child’s long-term health and intellectual development—children impacted by it are likely to develop 30% fewer neural connections (see figures below)—while being associated with poor performance in school and an inability to earn a living wage later in life. 

For the countries where youth are experiencing it, their productivity and economic growth could be adversely impacted. And it affects more than a quarter of the global child population under five years of age—over 160 million children—which would be the equivalent of the 8th largest country by population in the world. For example, just in Africa, it affects about 40 % of children under 5 years of age.

The “it” is chronic malnutrition, a scourge caused by the lack of specific nutrients during critical times in early childhood, notably the first 1,000 days beginning from conception.

The damage is widely recognized as being irreversible once the child reaches 24 months. Because of the prolonged nature of chronic malnutrition, it is particularly less visible than famine and acute malnutrition, which occurs over a much shorter period and develops immediately, despite chronic malnutrition carrying similarly perilous health consequences. That is why specialists call chronic malnutrition “hidden hunger.” 

Perhaps the greatest challenge in confronting chronic malnutrition is not the fact that it is “hidden.” Rather, it is the misconception that the roots of this scourge lie solely in the area of public health. Yes, chronic malnutrition is a disease that carries significant physical and neurological implications. But it is also rooted in the challenge of climate change, as the reduction in agricultural yields and the nutritional value of staple crops increases the prevalence of chronic malnutrition—by potentially as much as 30% to 50%. For that matter, gender inequality is also a driver of this hidden scourge. Gender-based inequalities can diminish a woman’s maternal health in that critical 1,000-day period from conception; inequalities that include early age of marriage and conception, domestic violence, and poor control over resources due to lack of income generation capacity. 

The cost of malnutrition represents 11% of GDP per year in Africa and Asia and between 2 and 3% in the rest of the world.

The simple fact is that reducing and eliminating chronic malnutrition will require multiple actors from a variety of different fields to create the kind of global partnership necessary to combat this hidden scourge. The need for this kind of global partnership is precisely what our brand-new initiative, UNITLIFE, is looking to fill.

Modeled after the successful UNITAID initiative, UNITLIFE is our innovative financing platform dedicated to the fight against chronic malnutrition, a platform that will pursue this vision through four pillars.

• Through its first pillar, the program intends to build on a new global citizen solidarity movement and innovative forms of public-private multilateralism to promote a fight against chronic malnutrition among the world's most vulnerable populations. It’s objective is to enable citizens as well as private and public organizations to play a major role in rebalancing and resetting the global development agenda. 
• Second, there is the innovative financing pillar. Traditional funding sources (whether it is national budgets, official development assistance, bilateral aid or multilateral aid) provide essential but, ultimately, insufficient sources of support for this new development agenda. UNITLIFE will pilot and adopt innovative fundraising approaches and instruments to finance projects that will directly address the immediate effects and root causes of chronic malnutrition. Those financing approaches encompass voluntary micro-donations via non-cash transactions, innovative matching and crowdsourcing schemes, blockchain fund-raising, as well as click-to-donate models. UNITLIFE also intends to leverage sports events and star power to drive social giving and devise new matching donation and revenue-sharing schemes. These approaches will not only expand the funding available to confront chronic malnutrition, but also the variety of funding partners to drive this effort, notably corporate and institutional partners as well as citizens the world over.  

Global non-cash transaction volumes reached 539 billion in 2017. It is projected to top 1,046 billion non-cash transactions globally by 2022, which equates to a compounded annual growth rate of 14%. 

• Our innovative financing platform will support our public health pillar. UNITLIFE will support the increased availability and quality of programs that will strengthen the capacity of governments, non-governmental actors and development partners to provide treatments to chronic malnutrition. This will include direct support for nutrition-specific intervention on pregnant women and women with young children, including supplementing micro-nutrients for antenatal or prenatal children; counseling for mothers and caregivers on infant and children nutrition and hygiene practices; ensuring balanced energy-protein intake for pregnant women, and intermittent presumptive treatment of malaria in pregnancy. In addition, UNITLIFE will support interventions for children between ages 0-2, including vitamin supplements for children, prophylactic zinc supplements and public provision of complementary food for children that can potentially reduce chronic malnutrition by two-thirds among food-insecure populations. 
• Finally, there is the fourth pillar, touching on climate change and women’s economic empowerment. UNITLIFE financing will support the pursuit of climate-smart agriculture to ensure the existence of nutrient-rich crops, specifically in the planting of vegetables and fruit trees resilient to climate change. Additionally, the program will look to increase women’s access to land and productive resources, helping close the gender gap in climate-smart agriculture, which would enhance the role of women in this sector, and in the process their capability as healthy maternal actors. By focusing on both climate change and women’s economic empowerment, rural and agricultural families in areas of high food insecurity will be the main beneficiaries, especially women and children.

As the pillars reinforce each other, our vision is that UNITLIFE will mature as a platform for partnership by diversifying its pool of financing partners, updating its technical solutions and instruments, and continually strengthening and improving by incorporating lessons learned based on concrete data and evidence. These steps will ultimately help ensure the sustainability and enable the scaling up the UNITLIFE partnership model, while dramatically increasing awareness of the scourge of hidden hunger. 

UNITLIFE’s initial partners include the Governments of France; the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, also known as UN Women; the Ecobank and Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Foundations; and Mr. Philippe Douste-Blazy, Special Adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General on Innovative Financing and former French Foreign Minister. At this preliminary stage, discussions are ongoing to bring on board three additional partner Governments from the North and South; three well-recognized international NGOs and foundations, as well as a few multinationals committed to sustainable development. Also, prominent figures from sports, media, art, and academia are currently being invited to become champions for the fight against malnutrition through UNITLIFE.

With the Secretariat function hosted by the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), UNITLIFE will benefit from UNCDF’s expertise and core competencies of “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources—including innovative financing, development of impact investments, as well as management of global development initiatives.

As UNITLIFE’s intention is to rely on a continuous innovation process, the program will start operating in November from the newly established Tech for Good accelerator at Station F, the world’s largest start-up campus located in Paris. What unites UNITLIFE and Station F are our shared values and ambition to leverage creativity, entrepreneurship and technology as key drivers for systemic social change. At Station F we will be surrounded by like-minded startups, freelancers and entrepreneurs who are driven by making progress and together we intend to focus on delivering the best financing innovations to address chronic malnutrition.

"One of the most compelling investments is to get nutrients to the world’s undernourished. The benefits from doing so – in terms of increased health, schooling, and productivity – are tremendous” - Nobel laureate economist Vernon Smith

Finally, and to prepare to capture the donations from the upcoming UNTILIFE official launch, we have started working with Ecobank, the leading independent regional banking group in West Africa and Central Africa, to find a better way to capture micro-donations. With this objective in mind, we will soon introduce the first platform for micro-donations in Africa that will provide a simple way to donate to the cause of reducing chronic malnutrition. In our pipeline, we are already exploring and discussing co-branded credit cards, a dedicated app, tap to donate schemes, as well as other mobile and contactless methods of funding.

So, if you want to bring your tech creativity, leverage or innovative financing capabilities to reverse the scourge of hidden hunger, UNITLIFE is ready to work with you. 

If you want to advance public health to prevent irreversible damage upon children, UNITLIFE is ready to work with you. 

If you are interested in combating climate change and supporting women’s economic empowerment, UNITLIFE is ready to work with you.

Or, if you are simply a citizen, a private, public or nonprofit organization looking to play an active role in reducing and eliminating chronic malnutrition, UNITLIFE is ready to work with you. 

Welcome to the beginning of an exciting journey. 

Welcome to UNITLIFE.